บทที่ บทที่ 337 · MARIUS PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER,

THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD

He allowed Marius to slide down upon the shore.

They were in the open air!

The miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful,

living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. Everywhere

around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when the sun has

set in an unclouded azure sky. Twilight had descended; night was

drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a

mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky

presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The river

flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the

nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-Élysées

was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the

zenith, and visible to reverie alone, formed imperceptible little

splendors amid the immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of

Jean Valjean all the sweetness of the infinite.

It was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no.

Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible to lose

oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient daylight to

permit of recognition at close quarters.

For several seconds, Jean Valjean was irresistibly overcome by that

august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion do come to men;

suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch; everything is

eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer like night;

and, beneath the twilight which beams and in imitation of the sky which

is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Jean Valjean could

not refrain from contemplating that vast, clear shadow which rested

over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea of ecstasy and prayer in

the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then he bent down swiftly

to Marius, as though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and,

dipping up water in the hollow of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few

drops on the latter’s face. Marius’ eyelids did not open; but his

half-open mouth still breathed.

Jean Valjean was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once

more, when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment,

such as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does

not see.

We have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone is

familiar.

He turned round.

Some one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short while

before.

A man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms, and

bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head was

visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Jean Valjean

was crouching over Marius.

With the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. An

ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight, a

thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Jean Valjean recognized

Javert.

The reader has divined, no doubt, that Thénardier’s pursuer was no

other than Javert. Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from the

barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had

rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience,

had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied—the note, the

reader will recollect, which had been captured on his person—a certain

surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the

Champs-Élysées, which had, for some time past, aroused the attention of

the police. There he had caught sight of Thénardier and had followed

him. The reader knows the rest.

Thus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly

opened to Jean Valjean, was a bit of cleverness on Thénardier’s part.

Thénardier intuitively felt that Javert was still there; the man spied

upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a

bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin, what a godsend! Such an

opportunity must never be allowed to slip. Thénardier, by putting Jean

Valjean outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced

them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger

adventure, repaid Javert for his waiting, which always flatters a spy,

earned thirty francs, and counted with certainty, so far as he himself

was concerned, on escaping with the aid of this diversion.

Jean Valjean had fallen from one danger upon another.

These two encounters, this falling one after the other, from Thénardier

upon Javert, was a rude shock.

Javert did not recognize Jean Valjean, who, as we have stated, no

longer looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms, he made sure of

his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement, and said in a

curt, calm voice:

“Who are you?”

“I.”

“Who is ‘I’?”

“Jean Valjean.”

Javert thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined

his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of Jean Valjean,

which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized

him, and recognized him. Their faces almost touched. Javert’s look was

terrible.

Jean Valjean remained inert beneath Javert’s grasp, like a lion

submitting to the claws of a lynx.

“Inspector Javert,” said he, “you have me in your power. Moreover, I

have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did

not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take

me. Only grant me one favor.”

Javert did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Jean

Valjean. His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards towards his

nose, a sign of savage reverie. At length he released Jean Valjean,

straightened himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon

again firmly, and, as though in a dream, he murmured rather than

uttered this question:

“What are you doing here? And who is this man?”

He still abstained from addressing Jean Valjean as _thou_.

Jean Valjean replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse

Javert:

“It is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me

as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home. That is all that I

ask of you.”

Javert’s face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed to

think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did not say

“no.”

Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he

moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius’

blood-stained brow.

“This man was at the barricade,” said he in a low voice and as though

speaking to himself. “He is the one they called Marius.”

A spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to

everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought that he was

to die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his

elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulchre, had taken notes.

He seized Marius’ hand and felt his pulse.

“He is wounded,” said Jean Valjean.

“He is a dead man,” said Javert.

Jean Valjean replied:

“No. Not yet.”

“So you have brought him thither from the barricade?” remarked Javert.

His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to

insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him not to

even notice Jean Valjean’s silence after his question.

Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. He resumed:

“He lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with his

grandfather. I do not recollect his name.”

Jean Valjean fumbled in Marius’ coat, pulled out his pocket-book,

opened it at the page which Marius had pencilled, and held it out to

Javert.

There was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this,

Javert possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of night birds.

He deciphered the few lines written by Marius, and muttered:

“Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du Calvaire, No. 6.”

Then he exclaimed: “Coachman!”

The reader will remember that the hackney-coach was waiting in case of

need.

Javert kept Marius’ pocket-book.

A moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined plane

of the watering-place, was on the shore. Marius was laid upon the back

seat, and Javert seated himself on the front seat beside Jean Valjean.

The door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the

quays in the direction of the Bastille.

They quitted the quays and entered the streets. The coachman, a black

form on his box, whipped up his thin horses. A glacial silence reigned

in the carriage. Marius, motionless, with his body resting in the

corner, and his head drooping on his breast, his arms hanging, his legs

stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of

shadow, and Javert of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose

interior, every time that it passed in front of a street lantern,

appeared to be turned lividly wan, as by an intermittent flash of

lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the

three forms of tragic immobility, the corpse, the spectre, and the

statue.